A short, but sweet observation on Americans and their credit binge from the past 30 years as seen by Richard Wolff during a GRITtv interview. Wolff is calling for fundamental changes in our Economic structure.
Wolff is telling us we cannot go back to being pinoneers who no longer "Go west", but who, instread, "Go into debt, " as that way only puts us back on a train running down the tracks into a brick wall.
This is an ingenious tool developed by the US Census Bureau. You can click on individual states to see their change in population. You can click on years at the bottom of the interactive graph to see a sliding trend in population growth overset a map of the USA.
The first two lawsuits by states attorney generals have just been filed against Bank of America. These lawsuits center around Bank of America's alleged fraudulent and deceptive practices concerning loan "re-modifications".
MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann reports why Nevada State Attorney General, Catherine Cortez Matso (D), filed her lawsuit against Bank of America:
"Misleading consumers with false assurances that their homes would not be foreclosed while their requests for modifications were pending, but sending foreclosure notices, scheduling auction dates, and even selling consumers' homes while waiting for decisions.
Misrepresenting to consumers that they must be in default on their mortgages to be eligible for modifications when, in fact, current borrowers are eligible for assistance.
Making false promises to consumers that their modifications would be made permanent if they successfully completed trial modification periods, but then failing to convert these modifications.
And falsely notifying consumers or credit agencies that consumers are in default when they are not."
In addition to the Nevada and Arizona lawsuits, Countdown also notes that Iowa Attorney General, Tom Miller (D), is continuing to coordinate a 50 state investigation in loan servicers' documentation practices, practices which have led some loan servicers to foreclose on homeowners who had already paid off their mortgages in full.
In a meeting with homeowners last week, Tom Miller said, "We will put people in jail," and he described the current exploitive and dysfunctional loan re-modification program as "Insane".
Countdown's fill in host, Chris Hayes, then goes on to interview Terry Goddard (D), Arizona Attorney General, for an eye opening look at how pervasive the "bilking of America" really is:
David Stockman, former Director of OMB during Ronald Reagan's administration, and Dylan Ratigan discuss the Tax Cut deal between Republicans and Democrats. Stockman calls the Bush Tax Cuts "the biggest fiscal mistake in history."
As Ratigan points out in the segment's beginning, the defecit has been a problem for the better part of 30 years. In 1981, under Ronald Reagan, our debt was 32% of our GDP. When Reagan left office, our debt/GDP ratio had grown to 52%.
Today, our debt is 94% of our GDP.
Ratigan and Stockman talk candidly about the reasons we are in this sad state of burgeoning debt and shrinking revenues.
As Stockman so succinctly says, "We are destroying the Economy on Uncle Sam's credit card. And the idea that (the extended Bush Tax Cuts) this will cause consumers to spend for some more junk from Home Depot that's going to be made in China . . . to me . . . doesn't make any sense at all."
And toward the end of this interview, Stockman let's loose with this:
"In January 2000, there were 72 million middle class jobs . . . manufacturing, construction, finance, insurance, real estate, the professions, transportation, distribution and so forth. Today, a decade later, there are only 65 million (middle class jobs). We've lost 10% of our middle class family supporting jobs, and we've only created temporary, part-time jobs, so there's been no real growth. What we've had instead is a Fed engineered serial bubble that's created the appearance of wealth, that has caused people to consume beyond their means through borrowing and that has flushed the income and the wealth of our society up to the top as a result of the Fed turning the financial markets into a casino.
These are pure casinos. They are NOT capital markets. They are not adding to the productive capacity of our Economy. They are simply a bunch of robots trading with each other by the millisecond as a result of the Fed giving them Zero Cost overnight money and giving them all kinds of hand signals on what to front run.
This is a very bad mess and we're not going to get our Economy solved until we get a totally new policy at the Fed and a clean up of this whole casino that used to be called Wall Street."
